Ojai Time

Long-time collectors of vintage American pottery and Navajo art found the right house for their collections. It was built as a winter haven for industrialist Edward Drummon Libbey (as in Libbey Owens-Corning). Bill and Kathy Couturie restored it in the 1990s.

Built in 1908, this Western Arts & Crafts house in Ojai, Calif., has board walls. Chumash Indian motifs decorate the beams; like the stone fireplace, the decorative painting is original.

When Bill and Kathy Couturie toured this aging Craftsman Bungalow in 1993, Bill remembers thinking, This is the last piece in our collection. He and Kathy were visiting Ojai, California, from San Francisco. The house was built as a winter haven for Midwest industrialist Edward Drummond Libbey (Libbey Owens-Corning). With its old-growth redwood, board-and-batten construction, its front door and beams embellished with Chumash Indian motifs, its massive stone fireplace and countless original fixtures and hardware, the house spoke to them. It was an ideal period piece to contain their collections of Arts & Crafts furniture.

Framed pictorial tiles are by contemporary ceramic artist Laird Plumleigh. www.lairdplumleigh.com The owners have long collected American vintage pottery.

So Bill and Kathy sold their small Craftsman house in San Francisco and moved to the Libbey house. It was fitting that they would become the stewards of the historic building. “I could see exactly where everything would go,” says Bill. Their Monterey and Stickley furniture, Bauer pottery, Grueby tiles, and Navajo rugs were quite comfortable in rooms once occupied by the prosperous businessman from Akron, Ohio. Still, they found it just a little eerie when the couple found a black-and-white photograph of the Libbey living room, circa 1916.

“It looked exactly the same then as it does today, furnished with our couches,” Bill reveals. “It still feels like you’re stepping into California in the ’teens.” On the mantel, where Libbey had displayed his Kachina Indian dolls, the Couturies’ extensive collection of Skookum Indian figures now stands.

Known for its early California architecture and breathtaking scenery, Ojai is about 75 miles north of Los Angeles and 25 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean. The setting held much appeal to the Couteries, whose son, Caleb, was born in 1996. The location was close to Bill’s film work in L.A., but remote
enough to stimulate creative juices.

Indeed, Ojai is the Chumash word for “nest,” which seems apt when you enter this uncommon valley that runs from east to west. The geographical orientation causes what is famously known as Ojai’s “pink moment,” Bill explains. “In the film business, we call it the ‘golden hour,’ when the light turns honey-colored late in the day. But in Ojai, when the sun goes beyond the horizon, the Topa Topa Mountains turn the color of pink bougainvillea.” Myron Hunt, the Los Angeles architect responsible for the Huntington Art Gallery in San Marino and the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, must have observed the sun’s rosy glow on the mountains when he oriented the house toward the view.

Colorful Fiesta dinnerware was one of the couple’s early collections. The dining room buffet came with the property; its charcoal and salmon paint decoration is typical of Chumash Indian design.

Intended as Libbey’s West Coast hunting lodge, the residence is situated on Ojai’s historic Foothill Road, which was just a horse trail when Libbey arrived. Generous in its proportions but intimate for its occupants, the 3,500-square-foot residence is dominated by two connecting rooms, a 20′ x 40′ living room and a 10′ x 20′ dining room, that remained relatively untouched. The walls were formed by overlapped and staggered 1” x 12” redwood boards with batten strips over the seams. The original redwood was limed, giving the wood an olive or pink cast, depending upon changes of light during the day.

Facing east, a 15′ x 50′, glassed-in sun porch spans these two central rooms. When the morning sun comes through the restored windows, you can see the rippled texture of the vintage glass. “A lot of bungalows have a reputation for being too dark, but we don’t have that problem here,” Bill says. “This much glass is unusual for a Craftsman house.”

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